2 HD's causing havoc..PLEASE HELP!!!

[buletbugs]

I have a new WIN XP computer. It worked fine. Old games will not play. I added 2nd HD. Back and forth to get them both runnning with OLD HD WIN98. Only way to get it going was to boot from BIOS.

But..I had some bugs on old HD so I decided to format and start fresh. The computer formatted the new HD!!!!!!

I had old utility of UNFORMAT. I tried that on new HD to try and get files back. I can see the files on the MSDOS screen but it showed the file names as gibberish. Now I don't see a thing.

I called the computer people and we went through the sequence. the new WINXP HD is working but it doesn't see a operating system so it can't start up.

I booted up from the old WIN98 HD which works.

In Windows Explorer you can see the new HD listed as
D: drive. When I click D: drive it tells me...

D: is not accessible
A device attached to the system is not functioning.

If I go into SYSTEM PROPERTIES it lists 2 HD's. The first one shows it is the C: drive but the second HD does not show any drive letter. IT is faded out.

The computer people told me to take HD out and put in another computer so the other computer can see the files and not the operating system so I can just retrieve my files.

I tried scandisk and fdisk ....all no good.

Is there a command that I can put in the WIN 98 autoexec or config.sys file to make the computer see the D: drive??

Help help help help help

buletbugs

 

[dakels]

Are you still trying to recover formatted data or just trying to get it work now and forget the old data? If you trying to recover that old data then you have to take some precautions. First off, all that data is now sort of earmarked as ok to write over. The more you try to access and use that drive, the worse the chance that your old data will be recoverable. If I recall correctly, the standard window format won't zero all data so you have a chance or recovery. You just have a new disk header and a fresh directory. If your format was a long one that took several hours, then you're screwed. If it was a normal 10-15 minute one, then you may be able to recover alot of old data, but there will be no organization to it since the formating destroyed the old filing architecture (directory trees). All the files in there will be in one big mess. There will be no kind of directory at all. Usually, whatever files you need to recover, you will have to try and sort thru the humongous list and find the specific files you need. This may be a list of tens of thousands of files.

If the data you lost is critical and you need to recover it at any cost, then I would recommend using a data recovery service. I doubt thats what you need tho and they cost a fortune ($500-3000+). If you just want to give it a shot from home then maybe something like <A HREF="http://www.highergroundsoftware.com/6.html" target="_new">hard drive mechanic</A> or other HD recovery utility will work.

If you don't care about the old files, then all you are concerned with is just getting the drive to recognize. You'll have to go thru the basic steps of checking master/slave setup, etc. See if the bios reads it, then see if the comp will mount the drive. Seems your bios is seeing the drive but Windows is not, probably due to a conflict in formatting/driver versions. Someone else will have to walk you thru that since I am no expert.

What is it you want to do exactly? Is the old data unimportant at this point?

 

[buletbugs]

I want to recover some of the files that are on the HD.
I don't need everything but some files are very important.
I can get the HD to work. When I disconnect the old HD and use the NEW one...I can reinstall WINXP with no problem. But I don't want to do that yet.

I want to try and recover some of the important files if possible. I am willing to go through the files to possible find what I need.

It is worth 3000.00 to try and recover it. Of course not...but I would still like to try and recover them before taking the final step.

No..it was a fast 5 minute format.